Be Careful of Charmed Bracelets

"Everything counts when your building a house (made) of cards."
Random Brady, circa 1970.


For a minute there, it was touch and go. I'm not sure how to explain it. One day we had it, the next, I was hiding in the dark behind a Home Depot moving box with my husband opening and closing doors thinking I had thrown myself into the lake.

I.Kid.You.Not.

It wasn't worth killing myself over, I wasn't even close, and don't flatter yourself that I would over you - but for a moment, even still, i can imagine life without him. For the first time, and not the last. Disappointed, yes. Angry, still. Bitter perhaps. Reality? You'd have to know me to understand. You'd have to have home movies of my childhood, you'd have to have real estate in my head from age 5 to 12.

I fell in love with the Barbie townhouse because it WAS a house. I spent hours playing with a Fisher Price village (#997 actually) squinting down low, imagining myself in their town. The barber Phil, the nurse Susan, the little red dress girl Rose and her friend Violet. Longing to walk around the corner of the Merry Go Round to go in the backdoor of the ticket booth. Creating an alternate universe underground where I could open the turf with my blue metal key. Literally. Hours. Hours imagining myself living in a town, with normal people, doing normal things. Innocent things.

I went to a therapist once in my early 20s. I had left the only decent boyfriend I had dated, in hindsight I see he was a borderline depressive, and I was questioning whereto go next. In my 20s with two abusive boyfriends behind me, terrible parents, virtually no support, and wondering where the fucking rule book was and who had the goddamn map.

She asked me to visualize where I wanted to be in my life, and all I could see was an apartment with curtains and sun behind them.

That was my only dream.

Some people, by 22, wish for France, for travel, for fame, for glamor, for love. Some people wish for money, for a sportscaster job, for a degree, for a spouse.
I dreamed of a curtain.
All I ever wanted was a home.
A safe home.

i saw a psychic at 27, she told me I was in a bad cycle and there would be two more tough years, then 5 of growth and finally, 11 years from our conversation, it would all be alright.
Fuck You.

Sometime in my 30s I bought my house. You know, the rest, we met, we married, and as I write this, we moved.

What you don't know is how he gambled our marriage. How he delivered the ultimatum. How the house I worked 10 years to save for, he squandered. he had us rent it to strangers, who I knew were wrong, who I begged him NOT to trust, who I pleaded with him NOT to allow in, he rented my home to them, and in 10 weeks they've trashed it.
And he moved us into a plce I never wanted o be. A place that doesn't work. A place I begged him not to move us.

He didnt listen , not to me present day and not to the child me who bargained, who yelled, who pleaded with him NOT to do this.
And here we are.
In his new house.

Where I work everyday to turn it into a home.
Were it not for our children I would have left him.
While he simply doesnt acknowledge the damage he has done.